The Court of Appeal upheld Peter Burton and his wife Susan as 'proprietors' of Ireby Fell after a legal challenge by villagers

Irate villagers have lost the latest round of a legal battle with newcomers whose 'lordship activities' made them unpopular.

The tiny hamlet of Ireby - population 60 - has been riven by legal war ever since retired banker, Peter Burton, paid just £1 to have himself registered ‘Lord of the Manor of Ireby’ and owner of Ireby Fell, which looms over the village and is one of the highest points in Lancashire.

In what a senior judge today described as an ‘unlovely’ and ‘unneighbourly’ dispute, five furious villagers challenged both Mr Burton’s right to call himself a lord and and his ownership of the 362-acre fell which has for centuries been used for communal sheep and cattle grazing.

The High Court accepted last year that Mr Burton’s title had long ago ‘lapsed’ and that the Land Registry had made a mistake when it dubbed him Lord of the Manor.

But that was of little consolation to the villagers after Mr Burton and his wife, Susan Bamford, were confirmed as ‘proprietors’ of the fell.

Now, the Court of Appeal has affirmed the ownership rights of Mr Burton and his wife, who have for 13 years lived in the ‘big house’ - called Over Hall - on the edge of the village.

Noting that it ‘it is rare for the chronology of a case to date back to the mid-13th Century’, Lord Justice Mummery said that, in resolving the dispute, the court had delved back all the way to 1254, when King Henry III granted lands in Lancashire to the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem.

The dissolution of the Order in 1540 was followed by its restoration by Queen Mary in 1540 and the long history of Lancashire families - notably the Tathams and the Martons - acquiring and disposing of various Lancashire landholdings from the 17th Century almost down to the present day.

Although time had cast doubt over the rightful owner of the fell, the judge said that it was ‘probably the Crown’ and that Mr Burton had mistakenly been registered not only as Lord of Manor but as joint proprietor, with his wife, of the disputed fell.

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However, in refusing to strip Mr
Burton of the fell, the judge, sitting with Lords Justice Jackson and
McCombe, said the ‘irate villagers’ who objected so strongly to his
exercise of the powers of ownership, had delayed until 2007 before
seeking rectification of the Land Register.

Mr
Burton had never disputed that the villagers enjoyed ‘rights of common’
over the fell and, since ‘taking physical possession’ of it, had
invested much time, effort and money on improving its management, the
judge added.

The row began after the couple bought Over Hall (pictured) and Mr Burton paid £1 to have himself registered 'Lord of the Manor of Ireby'

He had
‘discouraged harmful practices’ - including waste tipping and use of
tracks by off-road vehicles - had granted grazing and sporting rights
over the fell and had spent his cash on installing gates and posts.

The villagers’ pleaded that Mr and Mrs Burton necessarily lost ownership of the fell when the title ‘Lord of the Manor of Ireby’ was ruled defunct - but the judge said there was nothing ‘unjust’ about them remaining registered proprietors.

Lord Justice Mummery said the scenic moorland at the heart of the dispute ‘might inspire an elegiac mood’ and quoted Philip Larkin’s 1972 poem, ‘Going, Going’, in which he praised the dales as the ‘last remains’ of England ‘free from concrete and tyres’.

In his ‘History of the Township of Ireby’, Colonel W.H. Chippendall had described the village as ‘the Cinderella of Lancashire County Historians’, the history of which was ‘somewhat difficult to unravel’.

However - observing that ‘the truth is more prosaic than Lords, Manors, Knights of Jerusalem and stunning scenery’ - the judge said that, in the end, the case turned out to be ‘a rather old-fashioned unneighbourly dispute with some unusual feudal bits and some land registration bits tacked on’.

The case was brought to court by Eric and Angela Walker, Carole Scott, Edward Mills, and Christopher Balchin. However, by the time the case reached the Court of Appeal, Mr Walker and Ms Scott were the only villagers still involved.

Judges upheld Mr Burton's ownership of the Fell (pictured) and said there was nothing 'unjust' about the couple remaining registered proprietors

The villagers’ case first came before a Land Registry deputy adjudicator in August 2010 who ruled that Mr Burton, 62, had no right to style himself ‘Lord of the Manor of Ireby’ because the title had lapsed - a finding which the ex-banker did not challenge.

However, the adjudicator confirmed Mr Burton and Ms Bamford as ‘proprietors’ of the fell, saying that it would serve ‘no useful purpose’ to overturn the couple’s ownership, which they had registered in 2005. He said it was far better that someone should own the fell, rather than it being ‘left in limbo’.

Despite an enormously costly High Court hearing - stretching over 10 days - and their Appeal Court challenge, the villagers have now failed in all their efforts to overturn that decision.

Retired nuclear industry engineer, Mr Walker, 74, said outside court during the case: 'It started off as a gentle thing, and then we got together to see what we could do, and the whole thing blossomed into full-scale litigation'.

Mr Balchin added: 'Ireby’s a lovely place, people come and see it and think they would love to live here, but they don’t know what’s been going on.'